The Dark Crystal released in 1982 and introduced fans to a new high-fantasy world with the beautiful craftsmanship of puppet-animation, which comes as no surprise as Jim Henson was one of the directors. Though it was a family film, The Dark Crystal has always been considered by fans to be rather dark and creepy, which was a sticking point for many parents on its original release, but that hasn’t stopped it from becoming a firm fan-favorite.
Its popularity has increased over the years, prompting Netflix to create a prequel series in 2019 called The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance, which also had a tie-in video game release too. However, even long time fans of the original film might be surprised by some of the trivia about the film and surrounding the making of The Dark Crystal, check out some of these great stories below.
10 Fans Have a Snowstorm to Thank
The Dark Crystal may never have come to be if it wasn’t for a snowstorm. Cheryl Henson, Jim Henson’s daughter, explained that in 1978 her father and she had been due to fly to London, however, a blizzard forced them to stay in New York in a hotel with plenty of time to kill.
Jim Henson used this time to sketch out his first proper outline for what would then go on to become The Dark Crystal, filling pages with ideas, sketches and fleshing out the fictional world he hoped to create.
9 Crocodile Skeksis
Jim Henson’s original idea for the Skeksis race was that they would be crocodiles living in a palace, apparently inspired by some illustrations he had seen of crocodiles living in a castle in a copy of Lewis Carroll’s The Pig-Tale. This crocodile brief was what he handed over to the conceptual designer Brian Froud.
However, Froud stated in an interview that during the design process, he later changed the crocodile concept to “part turkey, part dinosaur”, resulting in the Skeksis that viewers know and love-to-hate today.
8 The Design of the Mystics
Brian Froud was responsible for most of the design work involved in The Dark Crystal, and while much of it was entirely original and made specifically for the film, Froud actually re-used an old design of a troll from his 1977 book The Land of Froud (shown above) to use as the base design for the Mystics.
In order to keep the copyright of his original troll design, and to ensure that the two could be identified as separate designs for licensing purposes, Froud added additional arms to the Mystics. This resulted in the Mystics having four arms instead of the troll which had only two.
7 The Seven Deadly Sins
Jim Henson’s original idea was to have the Skeksis represent the seven deadly sins, with each of the main Skeksis characters reflecting a different sin. However, as more Skeksis were added they found themselves having to double up on sins.
For example, the chamberlain skekSil represented envy, skekEkt the Ornamentalist represented lust, and skekAyuk the Gourmand represented gluttony. This original concept design is discussed in The World of the Dark Crystal documentary that delves into the making of the film.
6 Star Wars Reference
Interestingly, the mechanical eye worn by the Skeksis scientist named skekTek was created by using the center part of a diecast model of a TIE Fighter from Star Wars.
Something that makes this even more awesome than it already was, is that for the prequel The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance released on Netflix, Mark Hamill voiced skekTek. It seems Mark Hamill was oblivious to this little easter egg himself until a fan pointed it out to him on Twitter.
5 Setting Inspiration
The inspiration for one of the environments in the film actually came from Dartmoor, the area that the conceptual designer Brian Froud called home. This moorland in the South West area of England is steeped in mythology and legend, and has inspired other media such as The Hound of the Baskervilles and will even appear in Hitman 3 as a map.
Froud explained in an interview that when Henson visited him in Dartmoor, Henson fell in love with the landscape and British mythology, so it was incorporated into the film.
4 The Skeksis Language
In an early test screen version of the film, the Skeksis spoke their own language with the idea that the audience would be able to infer what they were saying based on their actions. The language was developed by Alan Garner, taking inspiration from ancient real-world languages such as Egyptian.
However, the producer of the film, Gary Kurtz, stated in an interview that test audiences did not respond well to the lengthy Skesis scenes, as they felt they were missing out on what was going on as they didn’t understand the language. After that, the language for the Skeksis was changed to English.
3 The Skeksis/Mystic Connection
By the end of the film, viewers learn that the Skeksis and the Mystics are two halves of one whole when they are rejoined into their original forms. In hindsight, the Emperor and the Mystic Master dying at the same time is a hint to this, but one most fans don’t realize until it’s pointed out at the end.
However, there are other hints that show the two are connected; for example, both the Emperor and the Mystic Master share a similar styled staff/scepter, seen on the Emperor’s bed and in the background behind the dying Mystic in the pictures above. In the audio commentary of The Dark Crystal, Froud explains that he meant for this design to be “a broken ouroboros”.
2 The Dark Chrysalis
The film was almost called a different name and did not feature the important crystal element, as there was a misunderstanding between Jim Henson and the conceptual designer Brian Froud. Froud had drawn crystal imagery for Henson to look at, but Henson was confused by the appearance of the crystals as he had meant for it to be “chrysalis” not “crystal”.
Froud explained in an interview that Henson decided to go with the crystal idea, but they felt “The Crystal” would be too bland of a title so they added the word “Dark”.
1 The Skeksis Appeared in Farscape
Farscape is a sci-fi TV series that ran from 1999 to 2003 and fans of the show might have noticed that the aliens known as the Halosians in the series bore a striking resemblance to the Skeksis from The Dark Crystal.
This is no coincidence, in a webchat from 2001 with Dave Elsey, the creative supervisor of the series, Elsey explained that the frameworks for the Skeksis puppets still existed and so these were re-worked to create the Halosians. Of course, they were allowed to do this as the Jim Henson Television was one of the production companies for Farscape, and Brian Henson, the son of Jim Henson, was one of the executive producers.
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